


Withhold

by MidwesternDuchess



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Guilt, Until she does, amelie doesn't really care about anyone, buckets and buckets of guilt, hanzo's denial towards genji, idk she and hanzo have an interesting dynamic, just kind of a dual character study, not shippy unless you're thirsty af for the rarest rarepair??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8430394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/pseuds/MidwesternDuchess
Summary: “I am resisting grace. I am resisting / goodness.” -Alice Notley  
  (They both had to kill a loved one, but they don’t cope with it the same way now do they?)





	

Angela Ziegler is an infuriating woman, Amélie decides.

Which is not new information. Nor is it particularly shocking. Amélie had sized the other woman up quite quickly upon their introduction— _re_ introduction, rather, as everyone here keeps insisting—all of them endlessly referring to the time _before_ Amélie was Widowmaker.

The time Amélie doesn't remember.

On the rare instances she leaves herself open to conversation—a trip to the armory or the infirmary or the mess hall—the ex-Talon operative finds herself regaled with tales of her past. Angela is the most earnest—apparently the two were good friends, a fact that Amélie sincerely hopes is exaggerated—but she is not alone. 76 will sometimes offer his own point of view, voice rattling out from beneath his mask as he watches her from what she assumes is his idea of a safe distance. Even Reaper, deplorable as he is, finds it within himself to share a few snippets of the life she has been cleansed of, though she knows his motives are more to irritate her than to fill her with any sense of fondness.

The only one who remains silent is her. The _other_ sniper. The one Amélie remembers.

Regardless, the past bores Amélie. It isn't as though she was an agent. She never went on missions or negotiated with other leaders or gave any sort of command. To the best of her—admittedly rather unreliable—knowledge, she was the simple wife of a simple man.

Her first memory—her first act as Widowmaker—was killing that simple man. _That_ is when her life began.

But Angela is incessant in her attempts to revive their long-lost friendship, and since Amélie has nothing to gain by upsetting the other woman—she's not so prideful as to alienate the most skilled healer among them—Amélie finds herself sitting with the other woman in her office, standing in the corner and fiddling with her rifle as Angela pours over documents.

She's irritated—Amélie can clearly see by the taut set of the blonde's shoulders and the way she lets her hair hang in her face instead of brushing it away. Her actions are rougher, less refined, and Amélie watches her out of the corner of one ocher eye, wondering what's upset the good doctor so.

She doesn't _care_ , but she's always more that happy to lend an ear to some gossip.

But when Angela purposefully shoves a folder off her desk with a harsh curse and a flutter of papers, Amélie raises her eyebrows.

She doesn't even need to prompt her—Angela pushes away from the desk with anger flashing in her eyes, raking a hand through her hair.

"He is an _idiot,"_ she growls, voice more venomous than Amélie has ever heard it.

The sniper just looks up from her rifle, waiting to see if Angela is going to explain herself, when she finds herself confronted with the good doctor's narrowed blue eyes.

"If I asked you to kill Hanzo, would you do it?" she demands.

Amélie's eyes flip wide in uncharacteristic surprise, before narrowing to slits as she assess the other woman.

"You would never ask for such a thing," she points out, watching as Angela bends over to collect the papers she'd scattered.

Angela sighs wearily, straightening back up and holding the papers to the chest.

"No," she remarks softly, frowning at the desk. "I wouldn't. But sometimes I wonder."

Amélie arches a brow. "I assume this has to do with his brother?" she asks, because sometimes stating the obvious is the best kind of bait.

Angela's hands curl tighter around her papers. "Of course," she mutters. "Genji is _alive_ and Hanzo won't even—"

There's a polite knock at the door, and Amélie has a hand on her sidearm in the time it takes Angela to blink. The blonde turns toward the door. "Come in," she calls, frowning.

Hanzo Shimada steps in, and Amélie drops her gaze to her rifle so he won't see her smirk. _Parlez du diable._

"Morrison requests your presence in the war room," he explains, standing rigidly in the doorway.

Amélie snorts to herself. "I see they prompted you to messenger, Hanzo," she murmurs, lips curving into a smirk when she feels his gaze snap to her. She keeps her eyes on her weapon. "You must be terribly proud."

Hanzo ignores her. She figured he would.

Angela, for her part, just gives him a very stiff nod as she collects a few more folders.

Amélie cackles silently to herself. Walking into a room where your hypothetical murder was just suggested? Delightful.

With everything in order, Angela fixes the archer with an icy look as she brushes past him, clearly making it a point to knock shoulders with him rather forcefully as she does so.

Amélie snorts rather ungracefully at the sight. Hanzo probably barely felt it, but she's willing to give the good doctor points for trying.

She watches as he scowls after her, replacing the last few parts of her rifle as she waits for him to leave—there's no reason for him to linger here—but he stays rooted to the spot, irritation darkening his regal features.

Amélie frowns.

She doesn't give a good goddamn about any member of this absurd team—she's here because the pay is better than Talon and when things inevitably go to hell, she can slip out through the backdoor with anyone being any the wiser.

She knows when they look at her—Mercy and Reaper and 76 and the rest of them—they see the widow of one of their best agents.

Amélie wouldn't know. She never met such a woman.

But Hanzo doesn't do that. Hanzo sees her for what she is—he doesn't try to justify her actions, or expect her to live up to the woman she once was. He's become a kindred spirit of sorts—the only decent fighter amongst a group of otherwise minimally skilled, useless throwaways. He too had been somewhat ostracized by the rest of Overwatch, and it isn't because of his less-than-shining personality.

Amélie had been somewhat caught off guard when she learned of his crime. She isn't in a position to judge—she's spilled as much blood as the rest of them, if not more—but she'd watched the Shimada heir just a little closer after that.

People who kill their loved ones are not normal killers.

Amélie is something of an authority on the subject.

Still, Amélie has nothing better to do, and it's clear Hanzo isn't going to start the conversation, so she moves to hop lightly onto the edge of Angela's desk, capturing his attention as sets her rifle on the desk beside her.

"Problem?" she asks mildly, looking up. She doesn't care—she honestly hasn't had the emotional capacity to care for years—but she asks anyway because Hanzo is the least shitty of all her shitty _teammates_ —her lip curls at the word—and if he's off his game she'll kick his ass.

The archer's dark eyes flicker up to hers, and Amélie holds his gaze calmly. She has nothing to fear from the Shimada heir. They'd struck up something of an unspoken alliance, seeing as their preferred weapons always placed them at the outskirts of the battle. He'd once pulled her out of range of an enemy sniper, so she'd snagged him with her grappling hook when an explosion almost knocked him from their shared perch, and it had just sort of continued.

And even if they didn't have that silent camaraderie, he couldn't lay a finger on her if he tried. In this, Amélie is supremely confident.

"Don't give me that look," she scolds him after a moment, irritated at his continued staring. "I'm not like that brat with the mech. You have no chance of intimidating me." Just to prove her point, she levels her own glare back at him. Her angry gaze seems to draw him out of his own thoughts, and he blinks a few times, like he's just registering her indignation.

"Forgive me," he murmurs, voice low and cultured as he lowers his gaze. "I forgot myself."

Amélie eyes him suspiciously—his high-handed properness always gives her the distinct impression of being mocked—but lets it go, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

"So? What happened?" she gestures at the doors Angela had stormed out of. "You upset the _Angel."_

He scoffs at the mock reverence of her voice, a smirk tugging at his lips.

"She detests me," he offers, crossing his arms. He shifts his weight, and the action moves the quiver slung across his back into the light, making the arrows gleam.

She watches the action for a moment—wonders what it is about arrows he prefers to bullets, if it's tradition or familiarity or something else—before looking back to him, lifting a lilac eyebrow when he doesn't continue.

"Oh my, Angela doesn't like you?" She places a slender hand against her slow-beating heart in false surprise. _"Je suis choqué."_

He just flings her an irritated look, and she spreads her hands.

"What? You didn't honestly think she'd want anything to do with you, did you?" she scoffs, crossing her long legs where they dangle of the table.

Hanzo gives her another hooded glare. "I have done _nothing_ to draw her ire," he argues.

Amélie rolls her eyes. This man is an _idiot._

"Hanzo, _sois sérieux."_ She slides from the table, noting that Hanzo doesn't tense at the action. Just watches her like he watches everything with those dark, dark eyes. She stops a few feet away from him—a healthy distance that the paranoid killer in both of them appreciates—and rests her hand on a cocked hip.

He stares her down. "I am rarely _not_ serious, Widow," he replies, a dryness to his words that has her narrowing her eyes in disbelief.

"Are you truly stupid?" she asks, cloaking her words in the kind of poison she usually reserves for Reaper and the _other_ sniper. When Hanzo's eyebrows slant together in anger, she scoffs, crossing her arms.

"Allow me to enlighten you then," she remarks coolly. "Angela Ziegler, in case you were somehow unaware, is the one who fished _bits_ of your _brother_ out of that canyon when you _killed him."_ She arches an expectant eyebrow, not a trace of remorse in her face. "Do you understand now?"

Hanzo's expression could have been carved from stone. Amélie couldn't care less.

"That is none of her business," he hisses, voice low and tempered like hot glass. "Nor is it any of _yours."_

Amélie rolls her eyes. "Please, spare me your theatrics, Hanzo. The drama between the Shimada brothers is _everyone's_ business."

Hanzo looks away, eyes still alight with angry. "I have no brother," he growls out.

Amélie goes still.

She won't pretend she understands Hanzo's avoidance of Genji—it could be any number of things: guilt, anger, pain, regret, remorse, hate, jealousy. The woman with no emotions is not about to try and figure out the reasoning of a man with an iron heart.

But to openly _deny_ the boy's presence? _Sympathy_ is something of a foreign concept to the sniper, but even she can't help but wince at the distance Hanzo maintains between himself and his brother.

A thought occurs to her as she watches Hanzo study the opposite wall.

It's a thought she doesn't particularly like.

"Is he not your brother?" she asks carefully, somewhat wary of where this conversation is going.

Hanzo doesn't answer, and Amélie's slowed heart kicks up a few beats.

She snaps her fingers in his face, and his gaze shifts to hers, where she holds it forcefully—ocher against obsidian.

 _"Réponds-moi,_ Hanzo," she commands him. "Is he not your brother?"

Hanzo swallows—she watches the column of his throat work as he steadies himself—before he shifts his haze back to hers.

"What if I said no?" he asks quietly.

Amélie frowns. She doesn't appreciate being played.

 _"I_ don't care," she snaps, because she _doesn't._ She just needs Hanzo to pull his head out of his ass before their next mission.

"But," she takes a step forward, still wary. "I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. The brother you thought dead is alive." She lifts a single shoulder in a half-shrug. "I may not be an expert on the idea, but that strikes me as something to celebrate."

Hanzo just scoffs at her words, and Amélie's eyes narrow.

"What?" she demands. "Do you disagree? Do you _want_ Genji to be dead?"

His eye flash to hers and he scowls. _"No,"_ he growls. "You say things like that and yet have the audacity to call _me_ a fool?"

Amélie glares back, matching his anger. "I've made mistakes too," she reminds him coldly. "Don't pretend like you're the only one here with regrets."

"Of course I regret my actions!" Hanzo's reply bites with a vengeance as he stares her down. "But regret cannot raise the dead."

"Luckily for you, Angela did the job quite well," Amélie retorts. "Your brother's skill is unparalleled. You _know_ this." She spreads her hands. "Hanzo, who else could wield swords like that? Who else could call a dragon? You said yourself that only Shimadas can do that!"

Hanzo scoffs under his breath. It's an ugly sound.

"I cannot accept someone under all that metal to be human, let alone the one I called a _brother—"_

"At least he's still _alive!"_

Amélie can feel herself shaking and forces her spine to stiffen, swallowing hard. Hanzo turns to regard her over one broad shoulder, eyes narrowed at her outburst.

"Widow—" Hanzo begins, but Amélie is done listening.

"I would give anything to have Gérard back," she tells him, voice tight with emotion she can't feel. _"Anything."_ Her words burn with the intensity of her honesty. Hanzo just watches her silently, turning back to face her.

"You don't remember him," he argues softly.

"I remember killing him," she corrects. "He was my first kill. Did you know that? I killed him in our bed."

Hanzo looks away with a quiet noise of dislike. Amélie doesn't blame him. It's not her favorite story either.

"Those deaths are not congruent," he murmurs, eyes still on the floor.

"You're right," she agrees lowly. "Genji came back. Gérard is still gone."

Hanzo curses, fixing her with an irritated gaze, but she presses on.

"I will never see Gérard again," Amélie tells him lowly. She jabs a finger past him towards the doors. "That man _is_ your brother. I don't particularly care about your shortsighted arrogance—that is a _fact."_

Hanzo glares, daring to step closer. Amélie stands her ground, cautioning him with a raised eyebrow. If he thinks he can intimidate her, he is more stupid than she thought.

"You did not know the Genji that I knew," he argues, voice hot and fierce. He flexes his arm as he shifts closer, and Amélie's eyes snap to the tattoo that snakes around his bare arm—watching it glow softly in response to the man's mood.

Still, she looks up at him, yellow eyes glittering in the low light of the room.

"You do not decide who Genji is," she counters. "Only Genji does. Expecting him to accept your narrative is no less idiotic than Angela trying to convince me to be her _friend."_ She spreads her hands. "People change, Hanzo. That is the nature of things. You yourself are not the same man you once were."

He scoffs at this, backing off, and Amélie tracks him as he makes his way to the door.

"Hanzo," she calls, watching as the archer pauses. He doesn't turn, but she can see the tautness of his muscles—the way his shoulder blades stand out like knives across his back. He's listening well enough.

"Next time, I will not be so kind," she warns him lowly. "If I ever hear this argument from you again, we will discuss the motives of our respective murders." She eyes his back darkly, silently daring him to turn and face her. If he tries to fight her on this she will destroy him in every sense of the world.

"One of us was a sleeper agent, the other a proud and misguided heir. You lost moral high ground to the _Widowmaker_ , Hanzo," Amélie reminds him darkly, reaching for her rifle to slide it back into place across her back. "Think on that, the next time your self-righteousness rears its ugly head."

She collects her weapon and briskly moves past him—knocking shoulders just as Angela had.

This time, Hanzo is forced to shift to keep his balance from the action, and he scowls as Amélie sweeps from the office, long hair swinging as she leaves.

"What if Gérard came back?"

Amélie goes still at the question. Hanzo continues.

"What if he saw what you had become—heard all you had done—and he rejected you because of it?" He pauses for a moment before pushing on.

"What would you do, Mrs. Lacroix?"

Hanzo's address of her has always been somewhat awkward. He met her as Widowmaker, but everyone else in this damnable base calls her Amélie. He'd settled for calling her name as little as possible.

But now he calls her by married name with complete composure.

Amélie wets her lips, considering her response, tasting her words.

"I cannot say for certain what I would do," she admits softly. "But I can assure you that I would _never_ deny him." Her voice hardens, hands curling into fists. _"Never."_

And she leaves with the other sniper's words in her head:

_"Gérard was a fool to love someone like you," the old woman murmured, looking her over with her one good eye._

_"You don't know anything about him," Amélie hissed back, eyes alight with anger._

_Ana Amari raised her eyebrows. "I know you killed him."_

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys, been a while, huh?
> 
> Before we get into the _“Duchess it’s been literal months where the hell have you been Overwatch had a Halloween event and you didn’t write a damn thing for it”_ stuff, this fic is 100% inspired by  
> [this comic](http://girlcarnivore.tumblr.com/post/151781889133/they-both-had-to-kill-a-loved-one-but-they-dont) by [@girlcarnivore](http://girlcarnivore.tumblr.com/) which if you somehow haven’t seen yet _go look at it_ because boy howdy it’s great.
> 
> Okay, so here’s the deal: there’s this show RWBY that is one on hand the bane of my fuckin existence but on the other is like the thing I’m most widely known for on my main blog, so I kinda got caught up in all the drama that came along with that show coming off hiatus. So to answer the “where were you” question: I was getting the shit dragged out of me on reddit because a bunch of people slapped my less-than-kind tumblr posts about RWBY onto the fuckin RWBY reddit.
> 
> But whatever ~~fuck RWBY~~ here I am back with some Overwatch angst just for all of you.
> 
> Widowmaker and Hanzo have, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating dynamics out of the whole motley crew, but then I'm always a sucker for outcasts.
> 
> Hopefully I’ll get back in the swing of things. I saw some people tag me in some cool stuff (which by the way is totally something you should do if you ever see anything from any fandom that you think I should explore deeper or write a fic for) so I guess stay tuned for that?
> 
> _Like this piece? Here’s my billboard!_
> 
> **[MORE OVERWATCH WRITING](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/works?fandom_id=3406514) **
> 
> **[MAIN/PERSONAL BLOG](http://midwestern-duchess.tumblr.com/) **
> 
> **[WRITING DUMP](http://dominodebt.tumblr.com/) **
> 
> **[TWITTER](https://twitter.com/MidwestDuchess) **
> 
> Have a good week kids! Author Mom’s back!


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